Vintage Wedding & Family Photography

Weddings are big business these days and with the average couple spending around £20,000 on their special day, setting up as a wedding photographer can prove to be extremely lucrative indeed. However the wedding photography market is pretty competitive and if you’re planning on making a move into this potentially profitable area, you’ll need to set yourself apart from your competitors.

If you’re new to wedding photography it’s important to note that wedding photography is not just about turning up at a wedding and taking some photos. There’s much more to wedding photography than this and if your wedding photography business is going to be a success, you’ll need to be prepared to put in some long hours and lots of hard work.

January is traditionally the busiest month of the year when it comes to wedding enquiries so it pays to put time and effort into marketing your services, ready to capitalise on the New Year rush. The cost of wedding services continue to rise and most brides and grooms are prepared to shop around to get the best deal so with this in mind, you’ll need to think carefully about your pricing structure. When calculating how much you’re going to charge, there are a number of things you’ll need to take into consideration including: pre-production costs, the purchase or rental of equipment, materials such as film and memory cards, any expenses such as the cost of your travel to the venue, post-production costs and the cost of printing and producing the photo album.

It’s at this point that hiring an accountant can be well worth the money: they’ll crunch the numbers for you and will check that your proposed charges and pricing structure will leave you in profit after each wedding, leaving you free to focus your efforts on improving and developing your services.

Wedding blogs are ten-a-penny these days and getting your work featured on a popular wedding blog site is fantastic and more importantly free, publicity. It goes without saying that you’ll need to choose some of your best work and you never know, you could end up being featured in a wedding magazine.

Incentives and special offers are great ways to attract money-conscious brides and grooms to your wedding photography services. You could try offering incentives such as free additional photos if they book by a certain date or a discount for choosing one of your more expensive packages. Offering something – a free gift such as a luxury photo album – to couples who recommend you to their friends is another great way to attract new clients.

Social media is yet another way to market your wedding photography business. Free, easy to set up and use, social media is an incredibly powerful marketing tool and needs to be a major part of any successful wedding photographer’s marketing arsenal. Encouraging your clients to share their wedding photos on Facebook is something well worth and why not upload some of your very best work to Instagram? For more great tips from the pros click here

Whatever you do remember to stay positive and be proud of your work and that everything you put into your wedding photography business reflects on you! Source: www.paulcraigphotography.com